You Cannot Get A
Skin From A Native With Them On, And Gay, Reckless Young Hunters
Wear Them Stuck In Their Hair And Swagger Tremendously While The
Elders Shake Their Heads And Keep A Keen Eye On Their Subsequent
Conduct.
I must say the African leopard is an audacious animal, although it
is ungrateful of me to say a word against him, after the way he has
let me off personally, and I will speak of his extreme beauty as
compensation for my ingratitude.
I really think, taken as a whole,
he is the most lovely animal I have ever seen; only seeing him, in
the one way you can gain a full idea of his beauty, namely in his
native forest, is not an unmixed joy to a person, like myself, of a
nervous disposition. I may remark that my nervousness regarding the
big game of Africa is of a rather peculiar kind. I can confidently
say I am not afraid of any wild animal - until I see it - and then -
well I will yield to nobody in terror; fortunately as I say my
terror is a special variety; fortunately, because no one can manage
their own terror. You can suppress alarm, excitement, fear, fright,
and all those small-fry emotions, but the real terror is as
dependent on the inner make of you as the colour of your eyes, or
the shape of your nose; and when terror ascends its throne in my
mind I become preternaturally artful, and intelligent to an extent
utterly foreign to my true nature, and save, in the case of close
quarters with bad big animals, a feeling of rage against some
unknown person that such things as leopards, elephants, crocodiles,
etc., should be allowed out loose in that disgracefully dangerous
way, I do not think much about it at the time. Whenever I have come
across an awful animal in the forest and I know it has seen me I
take Jerome's advice, and instead of relying on the power of the
human eye rely upon that of the human leg, and effect a masterly
retreat in the face of the enemy. If I know it has not seen me I
sink in my tracks and keep an eye on it, hoping that it will go away
soon. Thus I once came upon a leopard. I had got caught in a
tornado in a dense forest. The massive, mighty trees were waving
like a wheat-field in an autumn gale in England, and I dare say a
field mouse in a wheat-field in a gale would have heard much the
same uproar. The tornado shrieked like ten thousand vengeful
demons. The great trees creaked and groaned and strained against it
and their bush-rope cables groaned and smacked like whips, and ever
and anon a thundering crash with snaps like pistol shots told that
they and their mighty tree had strained and struggled in vain. The
fierce rain came in a roar, tearing to shreds the leaves and
blossoms and deluging everything. I was making bad weather of it,
and climbing up over a lot of rocks out of a gully bottom where I
had been half drowned in a stream, and on getting my head to the
level of a block of rock I observed right in front of my eyes,
broadside on, maybe a yard off, certainly not more, a big leopard.
He was crouching on the ground, with his magnificent head thrown
back and his eyes shut. His fore-paws were spread out in front of
him and he lashed the ground with his tail, and I grieve to say, in
face of that awful danger - I don't mean me, but the tornado - that
depraved creature swore, softly, but repeatedly and profoundly. I
did not get all these facts up in one glance, for no sooner did I
see him than I ducked under the rocks, and remembered thankfully
that leopards are said to have no power of smell. But I heard his
observation on the weather, and the flip-flap of his tail on the
ground. Every now and then I cautiously took a look at him with one
eye round a rock-edge, and he remained in the same position. My
feelings tell me he remained there twelve months, but my calmer
judgment puts the time down at twenty minutes; and at last, on
taking another cautious peep, I saw he was gone. At the time I
wished I knew exactly where, but I do not care about that detail
now, for I saw no more of him. He had moved off in one of those
weird lulls which you get in a tornado, when for a few seconds the
wild herd of hurrying winds seem to have lost themselves, and wander
round crying and wailing like lost souls, until their common rage
seizes them again and they rush back to their work of destruction.
It was an immense pleasure to have seen the great creature like
that. He was so evidently enraged and baffled by the uproar and
dazzled by the floods of lightning that swept down into the deepest
recesses of the forest, showing at one second every detail of twig,
leaf, branch, and stone round you, and then leaving you in a sort of
swirling dark until the next flash came; this, and the great
conglomerate roar of the wind, rain and thunder, was enough to
bewilder any living thing.
I have never hurt a leopard intentionally; I am habitually kind to
animals, and besides I do not think it is ladylike to go shooting
things with a gun. Twice, however, I have been in collision with
them. On one occasion a big leopard had attacked a dog, who, with
her family, was occupying a broken-down hut next to mine. The dog
was a half-bred boarhound, and a savage brute on her own account.
I, being roused by the uproar, rushed out into the feeble moonlight,
thinking she was having one of her habitual turns-up with other
dogs, and I saw a whirling mass of animal matter within a yard of
me.
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